Once Friend, Thrice Nemesis
by CookandBaker
Summary: The last case of Sherlock Holmes set in mid-twenty-first century. The return of James Moriarty, and the medical disaster that shook the nation.


Sherlock's Last Case

Chapter 1

"Intelligence... what is it?" I ventured to ask.

He sat across from me, obviously not listening, lost in his own world of thought.

"Memory?" I hazarded a guess, "The ability to remember? Logic, the ability to infer? Perception, the keeness of eye to observe?"

Sherlock Holmes did not bother to reply me. I consulted my notes once again.

"What makes people like you unlike people like me?"

Obviously he was lost in some transcendental state and I did not bother to ask Mr. Holmes what it was on his mind. Nobody dared to. He was very hard to reach. But in youthful quest for the zen of it all, perfection, absolute brilliance, unlimited intelligence, I had sought out the one man I thought could give me an answer.

I did not have the quickness of perception this aged detective had. Obviously worn down by the years that had passed, he applied himself to every activity, from bee-keeping to hunting down petty, thieving newspaper boys for his Sunday Times.

This man knew everything, amd he had senses sharpened to the tune of perfect pitch, an eye so in accord with the organ that directed it that a sweeping glance was all he needed for complete surveillance, to gather all the pertinent facts and deduce from them, instantly, the answer.

He was not a genius who dwelled so irretrievably in the world of his own mind as to be completely unaware of the world outside of it, not like several I had studied.

Recently, Mr. Holmes had taken an interest history and historical detail. He would fret over his television device (few of my generation knew what it was, but it was something of sentimental value to the old fellow, the selfsame one he had enjoyed in his flat with his now-deceased roommate, a doctor by the name of Watson)... what was I saying? Yes, he would fret over the many mistakes in historical dramas, not only in the conversation and setting but in the way that the butlers would tie their dressing-gowns and all that sort of nonsense. Still, when watching telly with him, an odd and slightly ridiculous pasttime for such a modern youth as myelf, I took to composing letters on my portable device and sending them to the producers of those shows, most politely, I must add. The improvements were slow in coming, but gradually, when there was little to nitpick about, Mr. Holmes grew tired of "watching telly". There was only so much dribble his overactive, absorbent mind could stand without exploding into some violent acts.

As a psychologist, having earned doctorate at the age of twenty-five, I found "intelligence" to be my area of interest and Sherlock Holmes, the aged detective of former renown, as my subject. He tolerated me, I suppose, having deduced that I had applied to work in this retirement home of his

Most of my days were spent trying figure this man out, and prevent him from killing himself or others. It was plainly useless to enforce the no-firearms rule in this residence, as that fellow could hide revolvers and other inventive and uncommon weapons of an equal nature in the most conniving yet obvious of places. How he acquired them was beyond me. How he managed to do anything in that state... well, I would not think him above malingering, or exagerating his indisposition, in some kind of elaborate mental game between himself and the mostly uninterested staff. For a man of such intelligence, it would be easy. It would not even require conscious effort.

Poor, poor man. I truly felt sorry for such a great detective to be reduced to such a state, with no ability to work, no mobility, and nothing much to keep himself occupied with. His very last case had brought on a partial paralysis that immobilized him, reducing an active, spritely man in spite of his age to a broken wreck of a retiree.

He mumbled frequently now, and I moved to straighten the wool blanket. Most of the attendants, efficient and kindly though they were, regarded this man's ramblings to be the utterances of a fool. They paid no attention, and stopped listening.

I didn't stop listening. He was, in-between incoherent words, mumbling about various things such as one of the nurses's private relationships, of the fact that the burnt peas meant the cook was suffering from bowel distension, or whatever it was . I did write it down, and in my observations of this man I noticed one thing -

Many of the hospice patients I have worked with remain attached to the technology of their youth – Apple products, Blackberries, tablets, and so forth. Sherlock Holmes, with the sole exception of his telly, did not. He knew how to use the latest devices and constantly spent his considerable retirement fortune on ordering them through the Internet – another outmoded form of communication.

It was sad, because he relayed to me, or rather to the skull upon the mantelpiece, the fact that his last case had made him inaccessibly wealthy, and selfsame one that had reduced his body to the lean, wheelchair-bound crumple of bones and flesh that he was now.

But it was not to be his last, though I did not know it then. No, Sherlock Holmes would have one last triumph before meeting his end. Apparently, we were to discover, James Moriarty decided to return from his indefinite retirement in Brazil, suffering ironically from brain-cancer, to seek out the very same East Anglian retirement home in which his once-friend, thrice-nemesis resided. What unfolded next proved to be a great inconvenience for fellow residents and caretakers alike.

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AN: This is an experiment and an idea, nothing more :) I just wanted to have a go at writing Sherlock (instead of Hobbit/LOTR/Middle-Earth) fanfiction, being a Sherlock fan before a fan of anything else. Review if you'd like me to continue the story, tell me what you think about the writing style (?)


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